Paris_ The Collected Traveler - Barrie Kerper [160]
I left the affable architect’s office having learned a new vocabulary, from débitumer and dépoteletisation to axes civilisés, rallentisseur, dos d’ânes, and gendarme endormie. Whether stripping bitumen off cobbles and removing poles from sidewalks, trying to teach civility to Parisian drivers, or installing cobbled speed bumps and sleeping policemen, Le Toumelin and his department have their work cut out. They can design a pedestrian-friendly world with low sidewalks, handsome paving, ingenious one-ways, and dead ends, plus limited, snail’s pace traffic, but the city of Paris lacks police authority to enforce driving and parking regulations. That’s the job of the Préfecture, which controls the Police d’État, often at odds with the mayor. Paris is the only city in France without its own police force.
The oddity of the situation continues: a major source of revenue for the French government is the tax on gasoline. It varies with petroleum prices and exchange rates, but generally yields about a euro per liter, meaning four to six dollars per gallon. So how much does the government really want to reduce car use? Bankruptcy would probably follow if green policies were ever adopted. On the other hand, the city of Paris depends on revenues from parking violations, so the anti-car war the mayor is waging is not only virtuous, it’s profitable.
Curiouser still, city planners have yet to commission studies to determine whether residents in pedestrianized areas are satisfied and whether, as anecdotal evidence clearly suggests, cobbles lead to gentrification—meaning higher real estate prices and radical shifts in resident profiles, street-level business, and noise problems. Once a policy has been adopted on high, the man in the street either adapts or moves out. Why are there no statistics showing how the demographics of cobbled neighborhoods shift? It’s hard to get eye-witness reports before and after cobbling, for a simple reason: locals of pre-cobble days disappear.
At the top of rue Montorgueil near the Sentier Métro station, the date 1991 is spelled out in cobbles. I remember watching the road workers laying them down, and wondering what Carrara marble had to do with Paris. Back then Alison and I used a ragtag gym in a tumbledown building off this street. Reportedly it was the oldest gym in Paris. We wagered ourselves how long it would be before the bobos showed up. We’ve lived in Paris for decades, in the Marais for over twenty-five years, and have witnessed the changes cobbles bring.
As I strolled down rue Montorgueil on a recent visit, heading toward Les Halles, I couldn’t help being impressed by the chain store bakeries and cafés, designer boutiques, and trendy restaurants, not to mention the offices of Web consultants, artists’ studios, and real estate agencies, most on side streets. Never mind that the Carrara marble pavements wouldn’t stick, and have been replaced by classic cobbles.
It was reassuring to find a handful of traditional places—among them the landmark pastry shop Stohrer, at 51 rue Montorgueil, with a nineteenth-century storefront and painted ceilings. They invented the baba au rhum and puits d’amour. I always bought sweets here after a workout—the gym was next door. The gym is no longer. A luxury apartment complex has replaced it.
The landmark oyster eatery from the mid-1800s, Au Rocher de Cancale (at no. 78), still has its wonderful murals of birds and boozers, and carved wooden oyster decorations outside. Lounging on sidewalk tables, thirtysomethings half hidden by cigarette smoke pecked at their laptops, hooked up via Wi-Fi. Indoors a couple of codgers rustled newspapers and looked distinctly out of place.
The totally un-PC façade of Au Beau Noir (no. 59) is still around, and new neighborhood regulars I buttonholed find the establishment’s dry-cleaning services handy. Further